He insisted on creating a garden beside his new country home, but the iron ore boulders stood in the way! Daddy persevered. He’d already sold off the largest ones for the iron, but he had to heave the mid-sized ones over the fence one-by-one. Even though only smaller ones eventually remained, they continued to ‘show up!’ Seems novice gardeners soon discover that stones continue to work their way to the surface of the soil! Clearing the land would never totally end on that rocky hilltop. That’s how it is with our own maturing in Christ, our sanctification. It’s never finished, a principle believers learn just like my gardener daddy learned about rock clearing. We’ll continue to grow up in Christ until the time we actually see Him face-to-face.

Have you ever been wronged or betrayed? Of course you have. It’s a devastating part of being human. One particular betrayal comes to my mind from the workplace, and I remember wondering if I would ever get beyond the hurt. When the betrayal comes from someone you loved and trusted, the wound seems beyond healing. With God’s grace and through the power of the Holy Spirit, believers can begin the journey of forgiveness. The memory might fade with time, but it never truly disappears. Not so with God! When Christ died in payment for our sins, an amazing thing happened—something our human mind can’t fully understand.

We collapsed, sweaty and aching. We’d just relocated the entire office and classrooms of a non-profit organization to its new location—a vacant building on the campus of a downtown church. The organization loved their new space but not all the details of the move. Seems the six foot round glass table wouldn’t fit in the new setting. We’d offered it to the church but hadn’t heard back. After a cool lemonade, four of us rolled it across the street and donated it to a non-profit resale store. They immediately displayed it in the front window with a conservative price of $75.00. We smiled at the thought of a long day’s work well done.

I love a good love story. Most women do! I do not, though, like to work-things-out when there’s been a conflict. That’s a relationship skill I’ve continue to work on. Years have passed, but I’ll never forget the six weeks of long silence from my fiancé. I wondered if I had made a mistake saying ‘yes’ to the proposal in the mountain chapel only two months earlier. Why hadn’t I heard from him? He traveled with a Christian band and consistently called and wrote—the days before cell phones, face-time and texting! As the days mounted, my angst and anger also grew. If we were to have a future marriage, reconciliation would definitely need to take place.

Broken relationships rank close to the top of painful life experiences. Friendships, marriages and the workplace offer opportunities for relationships to rip apart. I even watch with a sensitive heart as my granddaughter’s first friend/boy, as she calls him, begins to develop and remember the angst of my own teenage relationships. Broken adolescent friendships fade in comparison to the pain of loss God felt when Adam and Eve introduced sin into Paradise. The morning walks with God in the cool of the day morphed into hiding and shame. Mankind’s broken connection with our Creator set in motion what would eventually fracture the entire Universe.